SyntaxFix

[awk] Tab separated values in awk

Use:

awk -v FS='\t' -v OFS='\t' ...

Example from one of my scripts.

I use the FS and OFS variables to manipulate BIND zone files, which are tab delimited:

awk -v FS='\t' -v OFS='\t' \
    -v record_type=$record_type \
    -v hostname=$hostname \
    -v ip_address=$ip_address '
$1==hostname && $3==record_type {$4=ip_address}
{print}
' $zone_file > $temp

This is a clean and easy to read way to do this.

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